The Danger of Landslides – Kyushu Island

It has been a strange summer, lots of sun in the east of Japan and massive amounts of rain in the west of Japan. You might have seen on the news or even heard from friends about the huge landslide in Hiroshima Prefecture the other day that has killed 39 people so far with 51 people still missing. These kind of landslides happen often in Japan which is both incredibly densely populated, extremely hilly and prone to getting hit with large rainstorms. Perfect conditions for deadly landslides to occur.

Most landslides happen in rural areas far from any cities or towns and villages and seldom results in deaths or injuries, but one landslide yesterday passed through a town on the outskirts of Hiroshima City burying houses and cars and whole streets. It was followed by several smaller landslides in the same are which have even killed rescue workers trying to save the victims of the first landslide. And all the while the rain keeps on falling.

A couple of years ago I was in Kyushu two weeks after torrential rains had unleashed several smaller landslide that barely hit the news. I took these photos, probably in Kumamoto Prefecture showing the damaged hillsides and wrecked buildings. The photos are very poor in quality as I took most of them while inside a moving car.

An interesting point can be made from looking at the first photo. Do you notice the spot where the hillside simply slid all the way down? Can you see how close and narrow the trees are? The Japanese call this kind of forest for “Incense Forest”, meaning that it looks like a bunch of incense sticks stuck into the ground, with nothing whatsoever of under vegetation, no age differentiation in the trees and most likely artificially planted. In Japan where the annual rainfall of most European countries can fall over a couple of days normal healthy natural forest consisting of a mix of tall trees and a vigorous undergrowth, the excess water will be sucked up by the vegetation very quickly. However, in incense forests like this, the water has nowhere to go, there are not even any streams to discharge it out of the mountains, so it ends up soaking into the ground, usually with catastrophic results.

It is very easy to forget the power of nature: as we spend more and more time in human made environments, focused on screens and keyboards, we sometimes fail to catch the warning signs that out there. Stay safe everyone!